What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

If anything has been used as symbol of the slump it is the food bank.  It conveys an image of the great depression, of charities feeding those abandoned by the system.    It is perceived as symbol of failure and implies the 21^st century version of the poor house.  The growing number will without doubt be thrown in political debate as an example of how society has failed to provide often by those on the left to suggest lack of concern that charities are providing for people’s needs. 

Dublin MEP Nessa Childers (who was on 2 occasions of this parish) sees food banks as a product of austerity.  It’s often hard to resist the lure of a good line so let’s park the spin and let’s look at not just why a food bank is a good idea now, but necessary into the future. 

What determines the price of food?  Well it’s the cost of raw material, production its distribution and the profit margin.  If the price is less than the value that the customer expects to pay then sales follow.

But that makes a huge number of assumptions. One is that all the raw material ends up as a product on the shelf.  It presumes there is a consistent market led demand for the product and it also ignores the CO2 emissions and the cost of disposing or rendering of food that is processed but doesn’t sell.  All of that adds to the cost of production. 

During the week I caught up with a former college colleague who is involved with the Bia Food Bank.  He is full of praise for the support from Joan Burton that his venture has got.   He instances one meat producer who gives a ton of pork free every month to Bia Food Bank. They send the food on to charities that use the food to prepare meals on wheels around the country.  The gain for the company is that they do not have to pay for either rendering or incineration of the food or handling of the food once they donate it.  This in turn reduces costs to the meat processors.  The plus for the charities is that volunteers prepare free food that is distributed to elderly, homeless, and those in poverty. 

That is a good use of surplus food. Whereas just 1% of produced food on the supermarket shelf is banked because of the best before date, 15% of food in the production process never reaches any market.

During the slump consumption can be reduced and surpluses less however in a consumption led boom, food surpluses increase.  The cost that a consumer pays for an item includes the cost incurred dealing with the surplus food.  Any company that deals with this food surplus effectively reduces a cost and this impacts on the bottom line. 

However when consumption increases in a boom, so too does the volume of food unused in the production which is often disposed of.  Banking is an ethical way of dealing with produced food.  Is it moral at a time when CO2 emissions from agriculture are increasing that we should allow food to go unconsumed?  Is there not an obligation, especially when it comes to meat, that as much of the slaughtered animal be processed and that less animals should be farmed or slaughtered? Is it not possible by eliminating costs of dealing with surplus production that the cost of food be reduced for all consumers?

It is questions like these that don’t fit into an anti-austerity analysis.  Into the future these questions challenge those of us on the left to come up with an economically and environmentally sustainable   future proofing analysis.